Fabrizio Battaglino Bric Bastia 2009

It's always good to see old friends. One recently turned up, not quite on my
doorstep but near enough, unannounced. In truth she is not really an 'old
friend', a phrase that perhaps conjures up images of almost-forgotten peers from
school or university days, but perhaps more of a 'recent friend' who, by virtue
of disappearing back to Italy three years ago, I have seen nothing of since.
Then, suddenly taken with a desire to see Edinburgh again, she booked a flight
on the spur of the moment and, without any notice suddenly appeared. The
first I knew of her visit was a "guess
what - I'm in Edinburgh" email. Happily for me she came cradling two
arm-loads of bottles, brought over from her local enoteca. The DOCs on the
label, Rosso Conero, Langhe Nebbiolo and others, were familiar enough, but none
of the producers rang any bells. I liked the look of a sweet wine though, from
Fabrizio Battaglino. Perhaps we could give that a try?

Perhaps the ultimate joy in wine is the encounter with a great bottle, one
that seems to strike all the right notes at once. When
it is unexpected, or indeed quite serendipitous as in this case, it heightens
the sense of delight. Moments such as this do not come along so often, although one
peculiar benefit of specialising in a specific region or area is that it leaves
great tracts of undiscovered country, rich in untapped and even unknown vinous
resources, thereby increasing the likelihood of the occasional and unexpected
delightful encounter. Italy is one
such country; whereas I know more of Bordeaux and the
Loire than I have ever
done before, the rapid pace of development across the wine world means my
once-broad knowledge of other countries can be rather out-dated. Hopefully my
planned visit to Tuscany later this year will help a little in this respect. In the meantime
this bottle, not from Tuscany but from Vezza d'Alba in Piedmont, turned out to
be one of those unanticipated delightful encounters.

Fabrizio Battaglino is the third generation to take his family domaine
in hand, although whereas his father sold the annual crop to the local
co-operative, Fabrizio has decided to strike out on his own. He has about 5
hectares of vines, a mix of Nebbiolo (largely bottled as Nebbiolo d'Alba,
although sometimes blended with a little Barbera for Langhe Rosso) and
Arneis, a fascinating and under-appreciated white variety particular to Piedmont
and which has its own DOCG in Roero Arneis. As an aside, as a sign of my
outdated knowledge where Italy is concerned, I see the list of DOCGs seems to
have expanded somewhat since I first learned about them, when I'm sure there
were no more than a dozen. Having broken the mould set by the generation before
him, Fabrizio has impressed many with his wines, as evinced by his recent tre
bicchieri award from Gambero Rosso for his 2007 Nebbiolo d'Alba Vigna
Colla. It seems that Battaglino's name is one to watch.

As I alluded earlier, however, this week's wine is a dessert wine, newly
introduced to the Battaglino portfolio. Made from the aforementioned Arneis, the
fruit is picked and dried, reducing dramatically the water content and therefore
concentrating the sugars in the fruit, before fermentation. This ancient method
of producing dessert wine seems very appropriate for the region; historically
this was the primary method for producing sweet wines in Piedmont, although
these days they are rarities I think. Elsewhere the technique has never really gone
away, as with the Vin Santo of Tuscany to the south, and with Recioto
di Soave and Recioto di Valpolicella (and good old Amarone di
Valpolicella too, of course, although that is fermented to dryness) in Veneto to the east. For more on the
technique, I describe it in more detail in my now rather elderly account of
dried grape wines, part of my
sweet wine series from five years ago.

The result of this is the Fabrizio Battaglino Bric Bastia 2009, a wine
which possesses a rich and golden hue in the glass which seems to suggest
intense pleasures to come. Aromatically it is just as concentrated as the story
above suggests, with fabulous nuances of intense, sweet, dried-candied fruits,
especially candied lemon, with a rich honeyed edge. This character persists on
the palate, which shows a wonderfully sweet flesh, giving the wine a broad and caressing
character, but there is also a really fine, grippy-bitter edge coming through in the
midpalate too. At first the acidity seems deficient, which doesn't seem quite
right as dried grape wines should have a concentration of everything, not just
sugar, but it is simply hidden behind the fruit. Look hard enough and you find
it, in the midpalate, but otherwise it remains really well hidden beneath the sweet, concentrated
flesh. Despite this the wine still seems fresh on the
palate, thanks I think to the slightly grainy-grippy phenolic layer. There are
notes of thyme and sage, Russet apple and a sweet concentrated of orange fruit
redolent of marmalade. A great, intense finish, and it is very long too. Lovely
wine. 17/20 (6/6/11)

I have provided links to Wine Searcher here but distribution of Fabrizio's
wines seems rather poor; currently just one merchant in the Netherlands,
although Google reveals another in Switzerland. Italian visitors may well have
some luck at their local enoteca (this bottle was purchased in Rome).